


Paint (To keep your mind off the wounds beneath your Beskar)

by Remarque



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Boba Fett - Freeform, Boba Fett Needs A Hug, Chapter 14, Din Djarin - Freeform, Din Djarin Needs a Hug, Gen, Mando, One Shot, The Mandalorian (TV) Season 2, The Mandalorian (TV) Spoilers, everybody needs a hug, in between 14 and 15 i guess, season 2 chapter 14
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-12
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:00:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28022067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Remarque/pseuds/Remarque
Summary: Boba Fett and Din Djarin have some down time on the way to Nevarro and some wounds can be mended with a bit of paint and companionship.
Comments: 21
Kudos: 244





	Paint (To keep your mind off the wounds beneath your Beskar)

**Author's Note:**

> I caught the writing bug after the first one shot, so here is some more random made up freakin dialog between Din and Boba because they're just power bros now and I love it. I guess this comes after "Gone".

Boba looked up from peeling off his armor. The ship settling into the smooth sailing of hyperspace where everyone was able to relax after what they had just faced. Normally he would have stayed in the cockpit, but having Fennec around, and now this other Mandalorian has brought him out of his shell, if only ever so slightly. 

“Do you have a name?” He placed a piece of the scuffed Beskar on a nearby table. 

Din looked up from where he was wiping soot and grime and charred bits of his ship off of the spear given to him by Ahsoka. He didn’t say anything for a long moment and then breathed out a sigh. 

“I don’t… really go by a name. Mando is fine…” He muttered, resisting the urge to add an ‘I guess’ to the end. 

“Good enough for me” Boba nodded, curious but not judging. He’d met many Mandalorians over the course of his lifetime. Some he got along with, some he didn’t. But he liked this one. 

Fennec piped up “We better not be picking up any more of your brethren hitchhikers or that could get confusing quick.” she snorted. 

“Not many left to pick up” Din muttered uneasily. 

“You’ve got one though, haven’t you?” Din looked up at her uneasily, not that she could see it. 

“Does it matter?” 

She shrugged. “No, but call me curious. Boba’s got a name, so it’s not a ‘thing’ for you people is it?”

Boba made his way over to a footlocker near the rear of the hold and kicked it open, taking out a few smaller tins and bringing them over to the table where his armor was neatly laid out with a piece of course paper and a cloth. “Don’t look at me for that answer. I don’t really count.” 

That garnered Din’s curiosity as well, but he let it slide in favor of answering Fennec to get her off his back. “I’m a bounty hunter. Less is more, you should know that.” 

She held up a hand “Alright, alright. You’ve made your point, Mando. If anyone needs me I’ll be in the bunk” She climbed up to the second level and the two men could hear a door seal, indicating she was out of earshot. 

Din sighed again and tossed the rag to the side, placing the polished spear next to it. He looked over to Boba, gently sanding down his armor. 

“Care to lend a hand? I know keeping your hands busy can be cathartic.” Without looking up he offers din a strip of the rough paper and one of the separated chest plates. He hesitates before taking them from him. 

“You trust another with your armor?” 

“You kept it safe the first time, didn’t you? You know it’s value. I trust you.” 

Din didn’t realize how hard those words sunk into his gut and only nodded as he started sanding off the chips of old paint. This metal was old, and there were countless nicks and scorches and how many other markings that he couldn’t place. It might have bought Cobb Vanth’s freedom, but he would never understand it’s importance. 

“I..” He hesitated, not wanting to release a flood of feelings and regrets he’d been holding at bay, but what else was this day good for but getting things off his chest, he supposed. “I wish I could take you to our armorer. She’d be able to get these marks out for you. Forge it fresh.” 

“Eh.” Boba huffed with a shrug. “It’s done me well all these years, it’ll continue to do its job so long as it gets its care…” he mumbles low. “It feels good to have it back”. 

“How did you …” Din started not quite being able to hold himself back from asking, but still tiptoeing around shyness with this man he knows so precious little about. 

Boba placed a piece down on the table and picked up another before answering. 

“Made some… questionable acquaintances at one point. Ended up in the belly of a sarlacc.” 

Din’s head whipped over from his piece to look at the man but didn’t interrupt. 

“This leads to that…” he made a non committal gesture, clearly not wanting to get into the details. “Ended up out on the dunes, stripped down to my flight suit and skivvies. Tuskens picked me up. Ran around Tattoine for some years looking for it. Knew Vanth had it eventually. If it were anyone else I’d probably peel it off his body but that didn’t sit right with me for once. He wasn’t abusing it and the Mining guild deserved what they got”. He glances up at the younger man, who’s looked back down at the piece he sands. “Then you come along and get it for me. Made my life a little easier. I was hoping you wouldn’t get too banged up by the Krayt dragon.” 

“You watched and didn’t want a piece of the fun?” 

“Seems to me you had this situation under control” A smile tugged at his eyes and Din relaxed a little more. 

“That’s quite the story. I’ve never heard of anyone making it out of a sarlaac before”. 

“To be fair, I’ve never heard of anyone making it out of a Krayt dragon before, either.” 

Din almost hid a chuckle behind the vocoder. “Fair enough”. 

A comfortable silence falls over them as they work before Boba speak up again some time later. 

“What is it? The child”. 

“I…” Din’s voice caught and he cleared it along with his welling emotions. “I don’t know…. It was a bounty. Ex imps were paying in a camtono of Beskar and said it was 50 years old. I was expecting some… ex rebel or something. Not a child.” He finished quietly, handing boba back the piece he scrubbed clean. Boba instead, handed him one of the tins and the brush. Inside, a green liquid that manages to greet Din’s nose under the helmet as a noxious mixture of paint. Old, but still useable and specially formulated for painting on metal. He sets the tin between them and Din picks up the brush, starting to paint carefully, but the color makes him pause and look at his own foggy helmeted reflection in plate. 

“He has… He’s special. I was tasked with taking him back to his kind. Until then he’s my.. foundling.” 

“Who’s his kind?” Boba says quietly and carefully. 

“I’m still trying to figure that out.” Din mumbled more to himself than to Boba. He looks at the plate again and dipped the brush in the paint, slathering it over the piece carefully but quickly to cover up his reflection. 

“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.” 

“Yeah… Me too.” Din sighed. “He doesn’t deserve any of this”. 

“It’s rare that any do. The empire is ruthless. Even for the standards of bounty hunters, such as ourselves.” 

The words floated to the top of Din’s mouth, wanting to ask the man about Bo-Katan. About the creed, about Mandalore, about everything that he had been wondering and struggling with for weeks now. But it dies before it reaches his lips. 

“Do you not take off the helmet at all?” 

The statement caught Din off guard and subsequently he painted onto his glove, which he wiped quickly with the rag before it stained.   
  
“Only alone.” 

Boba seemed to be thinking hard, boring holes into the armor he painted with practiced ease. 

“I would say that is new to me, but I have not been around other Mandalorians since before the purge.” 

“Have you never sworn your creed?” Din tested the water, feeling as though he would not get the answers he was desperately seeking anyway. 

“No. My life… was not what you would call… typical. For anyone, let alone a Mandalorian.” He stated with a finality that only made Din nod. 

“I don’t think there’s such a thing as typical anymore…” 

“I don’t think there will be for a long time” Boba sighed. “Typical hasn’t existed in my lifetime.” 

The men fell into silence once again, the hum of the engines and the soft scratching of the brushes against the metal soothing. 

“It’s Din.” He finally said, softly. 

“A pleasure… Din.” Boba looked over to him, nodded and smiled for the first time in a long time, and Din knows that this will stay between them. Vod all the same. 

**Author's Note:**

> I tried keeping Boba's past vague because in my personal opinion he'd be extremely reluctant to drag it up and Din's okay with that. They've both got some shadows they're happy to keep stuffed in the closet. 
> 
> This is my second work for the mando fandom so take it or leave it I guess. I try really hard to get both their broodiness I hope it's come out alright. Is it exciting, no. Does anything big or fun happen, no. But it's more dialog that i just really so desperately want. They're bros and sometimes you just need to work next to someone in camaraderie without the pretense of needing to talk to fill the silence.
> 
> **yes I know there is a discrepancy between if boba's armor is beskar or durasteel but for the sake of the story at this point im going with beskar (I personally don't think durasteel would hold up with what he's been through but that's just my opinion)


End file.
